Somehow, We Still Carry On
by Shomei No Jisshi
Summary: The time is bleak, dreary, and hopeless. His Master is dead. The Valley has fallen. But somehow, he shall find a way to carry on... Preview to a possible future story.


**A/N: Sup. Yes, I have a new pen name. But no matter. I have decided on a new story that I will publish the first chapter to after chapter 5 of Spider In My Mouth and Sounds Inside My Head, only if if you like this one shot preview. It's somewhat inspired off a story I never finished when I wrote on Nick, but has many changes to it. It involves the next Dragon Warrior in the cycle, assuming there's not one Dragon Warrior. Yeah, cliched idea and sounds for a crappy and cheesy story, but I really wanted to continue that story and never got to. Besides. Now I have a story where I can use some badass A7X lyrics here and there. Why not? I talk too much... Anyway. Enjoy, or don't.**

The black panther sharpened Xiongshou with a small rock he found on the ground next to him, growling.

"_Live to fight another day? How the hell can I live against a man even you couldn't beat, Master?" _the young panter thought over and over, the scene of his Master's death reciting over.

"I never wanted to be Dragon Warrior. I don't want to save China. We're fucked, Master, and you know it. Is that what you thought, when you died?"

He looks up to the grey clouds looming over the horizen. He can hear lightning in the distance. "Is that what you thought, huh? Crazy old man!" He slides the rock furiously across the blade, and stabs it into the ground.

Chong Lu looks back to the hundreds of Valley citizens they evacuated before the Valley was destroyed to the hill below. Everything went to hell so soon after he was told he was the new Dragon Warrior.

He shakes his head. "I'm not the Dragon Warrior. I can't protect the Valley. I can't stop him, I couldn't help my Master, I couldn't see the betrayal in my friend's eyes, I'm so weak, and I can't help it..." he mutters, and grabs the sword from the ground.

He holsts it into his sheath, and looks out to the bamboo forest beyond. _I should just leave..._ he thinks, and starts to walk off in the distance before he hears a booming, "Where are you going?"

Chong Lu turns around to see the tigress Gequ look to him. A massive cut, now bandaged, covers her right arm. Near all the Five had injuries.

"I'm leaving. I don't belong here." The tigress walks down the hill toward him. "That's not true." "Prove it." The panther stares cold and hard toward Gequ.

"I couldn't save Master Korkai." "Nobody could, it happened too fast. It just... happened. You can't blame yourself for something you couldn't help." "But I could've killed him."

The panther looks down. "I couldn't kill Tiankong." "It's because you're not ready. Even Master couldn't kill him." "Master was an old fool. He believed we could protect the Valley and all the villagers, but we didn't. He had a belief that he can get this 'inner peace' crap from training me. But all that he did was croak. Face it. Master was a fraud. I'm no Warrior, I'm just a little boy who traveled on a caravan with dreams too big for his shoes to fill."

The tigress looks speechless. Chong Lu smirks. "See? Even you can't prove I'm the real thing. You knew from the second Master pointed at my face that I was not the Warrior, and guess what? You thought right."

The tigress walks even more toward Chong Lu, until she's only a few inches away. "I have one piece that proves you are." "What?" "You stayed."

The panther looks hard to Gequ. "You stayed when we put you through all that hell. You thought you _were_ the Warrior, and you are. You endured all the shit we did to you, and stayed. You were able to master Kung Fu in less than a day. You _are_ the Dragon Warrior, and you can defeat Master's killer. You just have to believe, and to kick some ass along the way."

She grabs his arm. "Here. Come back to the villagers. They need your help." Chong Lu sighs, and pulls his arm from her and walks past her back to the camp of villagers.

He grabs the hilt of his sword, yanks it out, and cuts the branch off the nearest bamboo tree along the way. He watches as it falls to the ground, imagining it as his enemy's head.

"I learned something today from that little speech you had just now, Gequ." Gequ turns around to face Chong Lu, who's back is to her with the blade of the sword resting to the ground.

"I learned that I know I can't do it, but there's no use not trying."

He puts the sword back in it's sheath as he walks back to the Villages needing his help and a smiling Gequ.

**Well that's it for that. Don't forget to review and bla bla, and see you later.**


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